Brewing Storm
by uscfanatic7
Summary: A prequel to "The Infected" through my OC's eyes.
1. Chapter 1: The Nightmare Begins

"Working as the security for the Smash Mansion should be the next best thing from being a smasher yourself" my idiot of a boss had said. What he didn't know was that I was going to be one of the smashers if they hadn't filled up all of the available spaces.

There was another thing going to happen, one that nobody knew would happen. I was working on a Minecraft world that I'd been working on for a while. "You should really be paying attention to the camera feeds, Reath" my buddy Jason said, not caring too much.

"And you shouldn't be drunk on the job" I replied, bringing up a little accident last week. "I'm telling you, somebody spiked my drink with something crazy!" He said loudly as he sat down on the couch we had in our post, if you can even call it a post. It looked like a cross between a living room crossed with a gun locker.

Weapons were carelessly strewn across most surfaces, which might be considered a hazard to some people, but we know our way around guns. "You know," Jason said for the millionth time, "I don't even see why they need security for the smashers. It's not like they need protection, especially from people they don't even know about. Besides, when have we ever had to take someone down"?

It's a bit weird how it works. To everyone else, including the smashers, we're just maintenance people. I didn't understand it, but Master Hand's paranoia pays the bills. As I was putting the final touches on my fortress of death, a red light flashed at the bottom of my screen.

I clicked it, and up came a message from the boss. "I just got a message from the boss" I called out to Jason. "Would you like to maybe tell me what it says?" He said sarcastically. "I wish I could. Come see this." I motioned for him to come closer as I looked at the mess of an email.

As soon as he saw it he was amazed. "I didn't even realize that emails could switch into binary code." He said. But one thing stood out to me, one fragment that wasn't screwed up. Two little words that put uncertainty in my mind. It said red alert. "Well, today's that day we get our combat bonus" Jason said, smiling at the idea of an actual fight.

I was a little more cautious though. "Gear up, take whatever you want" I said as I stepped into what would appear to be a closet with a curved metal door. I walked up to a man-shaped imprint on the wall, and pressed my back up against it. Clamps came out of the wall and locked me in place.

Multiple robotic arms descended holding what looked like a scuba suit with a lot of metal attachments on it. The arms fitted me with my customized Elite Advanced suit. I stepped out of the room and put on my helmet. I smiled as my HUD sparked to life, scanning the room for friendly electronic signatures, such as the one on Jason's suit. However, it picked up nothing.

Suddenly, I heard a faint shouting from somewhere in our little base, followed by gunshots. To make matters worse, the lights flickered out, leaving the only light in the room the dim blue ones on my suit. As I looked over the room for some sort of weapon I could take with me, I quickly realized that they were all just gone.

Not a single trace that there was ever a gun here. "This day just keeps getting better and better" I grumbled and stepped into the dark hallways of our base, not knowing what lay ahead of me.


	2. Chapter 2: First Contact

I stepped out into the dark hallways of our setup. My first priority was to find something I could use as a weapon. I jogged to the end of the hallway, wishing my suit had a flashlight built in.

I reached the door that lead outside, but had I a nasty surprise. The door was locked, and since the power was out, I had no way to open it. "Maybe I could kick it in…" I muttered, knowing that kicking a four inch steel door would not make it open.

I backtracked down the hall thinking of possibilities. My list of things to do was getting increasingly larger: find a gun, turn on the lights, find Jason, and open the door. I sighed, and went into the engineering sector. It was really just a big room, filled with wires and all sorts of mechanical junk.

I figured if anyone could get the power back on, it was our engineer Rick. Rick was a big guy, to say the least. He was five eleven, and was all muscle. He had once gotten into a fight with four guys at a bar once. He sent three of them to the hospital.

As I walked past a car suspend by some chains, I started to see drops of blood on the floor. As my heartbeat steadily increased, I turned a corner. I saw to things. One was Rick, and the other was some guy who was lying on the floor. Rick was hunched over the man; with what looked like chunks of meat dripping with blood was in his mouth.

Instead of calling out, I backed up quietly. Unfortunately, the toolbox that I accidentally knocked off of a shelf was not so quiet. It clattered to the floor and Rick's head snapped up, staring straight at me. He was in horrible condition. A bit of his collarbone was actually sticking out of his skin, and a chunk of his leg was inexplicably gone.

I turned and sprinted away, dodging various workbenches and machines. There was no way I could fight that thing with only my hands and not end up dead. My next thought was probably along the lines of ouch, because I was now lying on my chest with that hulking creature on my back.

With all of my strength, I managed to roll him off of me. I flipped onto my back only to have the monster leap on me again. Gasping for air, I swung my armor fists as hard as I could, pounding his already mutilated face. He just looked down at me, almost like a cruel smile. Suddenly he opened his mouth and lunged forwards

I barely had time to bring up my hands to hold his mouth at bay. My arms were giving out, so I head-butted him, my helmet breaking a couple of teeth. I followed with a swift punch to his windpipe, and he pulled back a little. While we were struggling, we had knocked over a table with several different tools.

I noticed a rather large screwdriver lying by my head, so I grabbed it and struck at the beast's head. It struck home, leaving the screwdriver sticking in his left eye. With a horrible wail, he fell away from me and began thrashing about. I struggled to my feet, and as I was catching my breath I noticed what looked like the butt of a pistol beneath some cloth.

As I grabbed it, I saw Rick getting up out of the corner of my eye. I whipped up my pistol, only to find it wasn't a pistol. It was yellow, and where the barrel should have been, there were two slim pieces of metal. In between them were three nozzle-like tubes. Hoping for the best, I squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.

Luckily, my suit's scanner solved that. A piece of the machine glowed on my HUD, and it was labeled "power switch". "Oh, duh" I flicked it on, and a light on the front that I hadn't seen turned on, illuminating my enemy, who wasn't any prettier in the light. Three lasers came from those tubes, all of them on Rick's chest. "Laser sights?" I asked myself. "Jeez, what is this thing?" I wondered.

A small holographic square came up on the back of it with the number twenty five. While I was distracted, Rick had recovered and was coming after me again. I lined up the lasers squared on his chest and pulled the trigger.

Three beams of destruction flew out of the tool and smashed into Rick, throwing him to the ground. The tool had a very strong kick, however, so much that I accidentally hit some button or switch. The two sheets of metal and the tubes suddenly rotated, so that they were vertical.

I noticed that the number on the gun was now twenty four. I then saw that Rick was directly under the car in those chains. I aimed at metal fixture that the chains were attached to and fired multiple shots into it. The fixture shattered, and down fell the car, crushing what used to be Rick.

I stumbled towards a chair and collapsed into it. What was that thing? And why didn't it die from me stabbing it with a screwdriver? Multiple questions ran through my head, so I distracted myself with my new-found weapon. After scanning it more thoroughly I found that it was called a plasma cutter and was originally used to cut boulders in mining expeditions by firing superheated plasma and essentially burning straight through all sorts of minerals.

I smiled as had an idea. I didn't need to have the power to open the door, now I could just blast the lock. I found a lot more plasma cartridges and picked those up as well. As I was walking towards the exit, I heard footsteps. I got nest to the door so I could ambushed whatever it was, I heard it yell out "If anyone's in here come out!".

It was Jason! I came out from the door and started to greet him when I found the barrel of a rifle pointed at my head. "Wait, wait, wait!" I said, not wanting to be shot. "Reath?" He asked, not lowering the gun. "Yeah, it's me" I replied. "Boy, am I glad to see you."

He exclaimed, "What are those things?" "Zombies?" I responded, not knowing what to say. Before he could respond, I heard a blood chilling wail that sound very close. We took off, running down the twisted hallways, trying to get to the door that led to the outside world


	3. Chapter 3: The Loss

We ran down the dark hallways as fast as we could, trying to lose whatever was behind us. We turned a corner, and ran smack into the steel door. I raised the cutter and fired one, two, three shots where the lock should be. Then I leaned back and kicked the door as hard as I could. Two things happened: one, the door opened with a groan. The other that was now my leg felt like it had been ran over. I groaned and clutched my aching leg as Jason let out a small laugh and said, "Maybe pushing it would have been a good idea, genius".

Light streamed into the pitch black hallways to reveal that those infected husks of our friends had caught up with us. We turned and fired at them, bullet and scorching plasma tearing at them. There came a point where I thought there would be no end as the bodies piled up, hindering their approach. Suddenly, as quickly as they had appeared they disappeared, melting back into the darkness. "Yeah, have fun in there" Jason yelled after them as he shut the door and barricaded it shut, ensuring no more of those things came out. "Well, we're out. Now what?" I asked my friend. "We find the smashers" he said, "We still have a job to do". He had a point; we were supposed to protect them. Unfortunately, as we got closer to the mansion, the grimmer it was. Infected bodies strewn all over the neatly cut grass. There was even one that looked beheaded. When we got closer, it was apparent that nobody could be in that broken shell of a home. The doors had been smashed open, and everything was wrecked. We called out a couple of times, but got no response. As we left the mansion, I said to Jason, "We need to get out of here". "Well", he replied, "the gate's right over there". I took my helmet of and glared at him for a second and said, "I meant out of the city smart-ass". He said "it's gonna be a long walk to get clear of this place". "Why do you say that", I asked him. He stared at me for a moment, and then said, "You must not get out much, the city is divided into twelve sections, and we're in the first. The most convenient exit is in the twelfth. And by convenient, I mean only". "No time like the present, let's go" I said.

After thirty minutes of walking through the trashed city, we came across something odd. Lying there in the middle of the street was a sword that looked horribly familiar. I bent over to examine what I refused to believe was Falchion. My duty had been to protect these people, but from judging my blood-spattered environment it appeared that one of those people was spread across the street. I started to sit down because I felt like vomiting when I found myself flying through the air, followed by a crushing impact. My vision was blurred, and there was a ringing in my ears. I faintly heard roaring and gunshots through the ringing. I blinked a couple of times, bringing my vision back to normal, and immediately regretted it. Trying to crush my friend was the worst thing that we could come across in this broken city: Giga Bowser. How something that massive had snuck up on us was beyond me. I slowly struggled to my feet seeing on my HUD that my condition was not good. As I sluggishly got my bearings, I heard a yell of pain. Giga Bowser had managed to swat Jason, sending him sailing into a crashed minivan. I aimed the plasma cutter at Bowser's forward and began to shoot. Shots turned to clips as I wasted valuable ammo on him while frantically dodging attack after attack. Right as I was about to collapse from exhaustion, Giga Bowser stopped. I watched as he shrank down to normal size, but he was still bigger than me and now he was more agile. But instead of coming after me he reared back and blew flames, charring my suit. There's one thing I'm afraid of, and it's fire. I panicked and rapidly backed up, swatting at the flames as panic rose in my chest. I tripped and stumbled backwards and ended up falling on my butt. I had just enough time to think "I'm dead", to see Jason leap on Bowser's back, driving his knife deep into Bowser's shoulder. Bowser lurched backwards into a wall, crushed Jason between the brick wall and a shell full of spikes. There was a blood curling scream, and when Bowser grabbed Jason's limp body and yanked it off his hand stayed on Bowser's back, impaled on those horrible spikes. "JASON!" I yelled, running towards my friend. Before I reached him, Bowser intercepted me, knocking me off to the side. Before I could make my way around Bowser I heard his suit flatlining through my radio. My friend was gone. But the worst part was that he was _getting up_. I turned and ran. I couldn't kill him, even if he is one of those thing. It turned out I didn't have two. I turned to see Jason pulling two things out of his belt with his only hand shaking. He threw those things to me, gave me a salute, picked up Falchion from the road, and stabbed himself through the stomach. I picked up the things and ran, not checking to see what they were. I knew Jason well enough to know why he did it. He would rather die by his own hand than become one of those things. I ran and ran, going further into this cold city. Only now, I had nothing left.


End file.
